Hadrian's Wall, Part 3

After our stop in Stirling, we made a quick stop in Edinburgh to pick up some tartan for Ellen and then headed back home. On the return trip to York, we decided to approach from the west so that we could stop off along Hadrian's Wall from the other side and hopefully actually find some wall that still stands. Mission Accomplished!



Roman ruins, check. It only took us three trips to Hadrian's Wall Country, but we finally found some of the wall actually still standing. Below is probably one of my all-time favorite pictures. We're a little goofy :)

 

We hiked along the wall for awhile and made friends with some sheep. That's actually a pretty common occurrence for me in the UK/Ireland.

 

Past the train tracks, we eventually came to  this:

Poltross Burn, Milecastle 48. When the Romans built the wall, they equipped it with "castles" to fortify the wall against the "barbarians" from the North. Of course, since we were there, we took turns invading and defending the wall. I can't remember the final score, but if history is any example, the Celts won eventually. Poltross Burn is one of the best preserved milecastles left. It was built by the the Sixth Legion and was occupied until the fourth century by Roman auxiliary forces- locals recruited into serving with the army in return for Roman citizenship once they retired. While there isn't a whole lot of it left, there's enough to get a general sense of the floor plan, and considering this thing is over 1500 years old, that's pretty remarkable. You can even tell where the staircases once were, since there are still a few steps leading up to nowhere.

After we'd had our fill of Roman masonry, we decided it was dinner time. I don't remember if I mentioned this in the Illuminating Hadrian's Wall post or not, but when we were here for that, we caught the train in Haltwhistle. On our way back to the train station, we passed a Chinese takeaway place that looked pretty tasty. We had an hour or so before our train was going to come, so we could have stopped, but we were overly optimistic and thought we might be able to catch an earlier train home, so instead we rushed down to the station. Of course there was no earlier train, but by the time we found that out, we didn't have time to go back for Chinese food. We decided to remedy that on this visit. We weren't too far from Haltwhistle, and it was getting to be dinner time, so we decided we might as well make for a place we knew had food. And it was far and away the best Chinese I had in England. So if you're in Hadrian's Wall country, I definitely recommend hitting up Haltwhistle and the Chinese place right on the main street.

So that's it for the epic road trip of awesomeness. After dinner, we made our very slow way home via all kinds of twisty narrow roads, but eventually we did make it home. It was a truly unforgettable experience, and huge thanks to Rachel, Max, and Ellen for the excellent company, and Ellen did a great job driving a stick shift on the wrong side of the road!

Hadrian's Wall Country, Part 1: The Approach from Newcastle upon Tyne

I'm finally (finally!) starting in on what I'm going to call the Epic Roadtrip of Awesomeness, July 2010. Five days, 4 grad students, 1 rental car, 3 tanks of petrol, some # of miles I didn't think to check before we returned the car, 1 big ole road atlas that became my near-constant companion, 3 memory cards full of pictures, and sadly no fried Twinkies or Mars Bars. There was haggis though!

Our first stop on the Epic Roadtrip of Awesomeness was a short hike along Hadrian's Wall Path, an 84-mile long National Trail that runs along- what else?- Hadrian's Wall. If you're interested in a brief overview of the wall, check out my Illuminating Hadrian's Wall entry (you can get to it from the Hadrian's Wall label off to the right sidebar.) We drove up from York and then detoured over from Newcastle towards Hadrian's Wall Country, found a place to pull over, and went for a hike.

There's not really a whole lot of wall standing in this section of the trail, but you can follow the marked path along where the wall once ran. The less ancient stone fencing running through here is likely built from the stones of the wall. We lucked out and had gorgeous weather; it was supposed to just rain rain rain all week, but aside from a few fairly quick showers, all while we were driving, and a miserably wet and muddy field when we got to Culloden, the whole trip was surprisingly dry.

Even though there wasn't a fun wall to climb around on, we still got a welcome chance to stretch our legs and enjoy some scenery. We would have had to drive further out of our way to hit a section of wall still standing, so we decided to just enjoy what we had. The trail is easy to walk and well marked, although you may have to get up close and personal with some sheep.

There's more photos up on flickr if you feel the need for some more idyllic English countryside. But we were particularly excited about this:



Trees! Most of Yorkshire is either moorland or gently rolling hills covered in crop fields. The presence of trees all closely packed together was kind of exciting and necessitated some frolicking :) Anyway, we hiked westward from almost the eastern-most end of the trail; there will be shots featuring actual wall from the western end of the wall coming from Carlisle to wrap up the Epic Roadtrip of Awesomeness series of posts, so I guess look for that in about 10 entries or so! Till next time~!

Illuminating Hadrian's Wall

After far too long spent like this (and yes, I do smack my head into the stupid rafters EVERY TIME I stand up, but there's really no where else to move my desk):

I took a much needed break to go check out the Illuminating Hadrian's Wall event March 13th, 2010. The event was in part in recognition of the 1600th anniversary of the end of Roman rule in Britain and served as the opening event for British Tourism Week. Can you imagine? 1600th. We just don't usually think in that kind of time-scale in the States. Anyway, the event features 84 miles of Hadrian's Wall lit up by beacons at certain intervals spreading from one end of the country to the other.

If you aren't familiar with the Wall, it was built by Emperor Hadrian (partly as a look at me being an effective and ruthless emperor campaign) around the year 122 to create a defensible line between the boundary of Roman-controlled Britain and the Picts to the north. While parts are now less impressive, when it was built, the wall stretched from coast to coast, although admittedly at one of the narrowest points of the island, and featured milecastles at approximately every Roman mile along the wall (they could be off a bit if the local terrain demanded it). The wall when constructed was around 15 meters high (that's ~45 feet, so not small), although much of the stone was later pilfered for other construction projects after the Romans left. So that's what it is, now let me tell you about our adventures getting there.

We start our tale today with four grad students seeking to escape paper-writing and see something that's never been done, a once-in-a-lifetime-experience (or so the event organizers claim). One of them (ok, guilty as charged) finds a link to a walking tour out of Haltwhistle to a suitable location for viewing the Wall. So our intrepid adventurers set off with backpacks and hiking boots to the little town of Haltwhistle (which sadly was not named for the train station, but apparently Hal-twysel, meaning something about the meeting of two rivers.) So we headed for the York train station and thought we'd be clever by taking the newly reopened shortcut and promptly got caught up in this:

Some kind of regatta that none of us were expecting was taking over both banks of the Ouse, so we ended up dodging rowers and boats and spectators and more boats being carried down to the river. Then we were off by train to Newcastle, which by the by has excellent cheese and bacon pasties. Then we took a little dinky train to Haltwhistle and despite our concerns that it would conk out before we even left the station, it chugged along and got there just fine. We met up with the walking group people and set off on a 40 minute hike through the woods.

Now I'm totally city girl. I'll deal with the 'burbs, but really, city girl. And I'll admit that it was super nice to get out of the city and "commune with nature" for a bit. But for views like what I'm about to show you, it might just be worth it to give it all up and become a sheep rancher out in the boonies.

We passed streams and cliffs (which reminded me oddly of Pennsylvania and West Virginia)

and rolling hills and old stone walls (quite possibly made with stone from Hadrian's Wall)

and an old lime kiln (gotta keep those fields fertilized). Ok, now here comes a bunch of pretty pictures.

See the snow way off in the distance?

And there's Hadrian's Wall. No really. Can't you see it? Maybe this will help.

So we were slightly disappointed with how completely not close to the wall we were, but on the other hand, we had a great vista of a loooong stretch of the wall lit up. It continues...

in this direction way behind the sheep. Speaking of sheep,

this lamb got separated from its mother with a fence between them and couldn't figure out that it needed to walk like ten feet down and there was an opening in the fence. Instead, it played Marco Polo with its mom for like an hour, which got really old really fast. We were watching the sheep drama unfold and cheering as it slowly made its way towards the gap, only to end up trying to climb through the fence like a foot from the opening before Momma Sheep finally figured it out and got baby around the fence and into the field, sparking cheers from the Americans/Canadians and chuckles at the Ameradians from the Brits.

There's more wall, complete with farm house right next to it. How cool would it be to have Hadrian's Wall right in your backyard?

I think this picture comes the closest to getting across the sheer majesty of what we got to see as the sun set. Pictures don't quite capture it as well as the human eye, but take my word for it that it was breathtaking with the hills and the old stone walls and the red and gold in the sky. I would not mind at all seeing that everyday.

Once dusk settled in, the wall began to light up.

The beacons started on both ends and worked their way in; here you can see three lights as they work their way westward, while below are two beacons coming from the west.

Here's more from the east.

And that was that. We made our way back in the dark down a super steep hill (not the way we came up- I wouldn't have wanted to climb up that thing) and caught the train home. There was a distinct lack of food available at Newcastle since we got there around 9:30 so we had hot chocolate at the bar and ended up eating dinner when we got back to york around midnight. All and all, we were all a little disappointed that we couldn't get more up close and personal with the wall, but we'll just have to make another trip to hike along part of it.